Israel and Zionism Commentary

Reclaiming Zionism's Good Name and Proud History: A Challenge for the Jewish
Intelligencia

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East Online Digest -
11.2.03

by Gil Troy

Amid this worldwide campaign to rob Israel of its good name, the long and proud association of Zionism with
liberalism is also threatened. Too many progressives have turned on Israel and Zionism with a vengeance, especially in
the university. Palestinians and their supporters have cleverly hijacked the rhetoric of human rights in service of that
great human wrong, terrorism. In a classic case of intellectual irresponsibility, Israel-bashing has become great sport,
with no thoughts to the lethal consequences, considering how much such hostility encourages Palestinian terrorists.
Words may not kill, but we have seen how they feed the murderous rage of the self-righteous suicide killers. The new,
politically correct position of demonizing the Jewish state and Jewish nationalism, combined with the Palestinians’ turn
from negotiation toward terrorism, has confused Zionists and anti-Zionists. With most of Israel’s peace camp reeling,
with Ariel Sharon’s right-wing government able to forge a coalition without a left-wing party, with conservatives in the
United States and elsewhere rallying to Israel’s side, it is easy to see why campus radicals caricature Zionism as a
conservative creation. Nevertheless, now, more than ever, it is essential – and surprisingly easy – to rise up and
affirm the fact that not only can you be a liberal and a Zionist, but that liberalism and Zionism remain not just
compatible but mutually reinforcing.

In so many ways, on so many levels, liberalism and Zionism spring from common sources. Both are modern movements, shaped
by the Enlightenment and other intellectual currents of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, with central tenets
rooted in the Bible. Just as it is hard to tell the story of Zionism without going back to “lech lecha,”
Abraham’s charge in Genesis to “go forth” to a new land, the land of Israel, it is hard to tell the story of how Western
notions of equality and social justice developed without going back to the ethical precepts of the Torah, let alone to
the crusading passion of the Prophets. Critics like Professor Tony Judt reducing Zionism to a Middle European sideshow
distort the truth in their zeal to tar modern Zionism with Western disdain for the murderous impulses of the Serbians
and Croatians. The contemporary stories of both Zionism and liberalism are intertwined with that great, defining,
sometimes ennobling, and yes, sometimes cruel, but absolutely defining modern movement – nationalism.

In the founder of the modern Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, these three intellectual currents harmonized. This
enlightened Viennese progressive is best remembered for jumpstarting Zionism in reaction to the anti-Semitism of the
Dreyfus trial. Yet in his visionary 1896 book “The Jewish State,” Herzl dreamed of the Jewish state as a liberal model
for the world. "We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and in our own homes peacefully die,” Herzl wrote.
“The world will be liberated by our freedom, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt
there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind." In this passage, Herzl
articulated the essential Zionist message that still holds true, and that echoes in the liberal nationalism of most
Western nation states – that only through self-determination can utopian ideals be achieved, that a community first must
unite and protect itself before it can become a force for good.

Nationalism posits that the community is the best structure through which to implement high ideals – sometimes out of
broad conviction, sometimes out of sad necessity. There is, of course, a rich, ongoing debate about how to balance
universalism and particularism. But it is very odd that often the same Chomskyite forces that go out of their way to
celebrate Palestinian nationalism insist on negating Zionism. Sidestepping the entire debate about the historic origins
of Jewish or Palestinian nationalism, many modern scholars accept Benedict Anderson’s notion of nationalism as an
“imagined community.” Whether you accept that definition – or embrace Professor Irwin Cotler’s notion of the Jews as the
original aboriginal peoples, still speaking the same language, still developing the same culture, still tied to the same
land after thousands of years, the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism is clear. And with another one of the great scholars
of nationalism Professor Liah Greenfield, identifying nationalism as the defining “constitutive” force of the modern
world, singling out Jewish nationalism, meaning Zionism, as the only illegitimate form of nationalism is sheer bigotry.

Just as Betty Friedan was not the only feminist in the 1960s, Herzl was not the only Zionist in the nineteenth century.
Zionism was a many-splendored thing, a broad, rollicking conversation attempting to create the perfect ideological mix
of Judaism, nationalism, liberalism, idealism, rationalism, socialism, and capitalism. Zionism was a bold experiment to
realize these ideals, and often entailed a rejection of the status quo. Nahum Syrkin in “The Jewish Problem and the
Socialist-Jewish State” (1898) insisted: “For a Jewish state to come to be, it must, from the very beginning, avoid all
the ills of modern life. To evoke the sympathetic interest of modern man, its guidelines must be justice, rational
planning, and social solidarity. Once a Jewish state has been realized on such scientific social principles, the time
will come for modern technology to flourish within it.” These were bold, sometimes doctrinaire, intellectual pioneers,
trying to fix all the evils of the world while making the desert bloom.

Israel’s proclamation of independence from 1948 also illustrates the happy marriage between Zionism and liberalism,
offering a model of how nationalism can be a force for good in the world. In reading these words, David Ben-Gurion
ping-ponged from universalism to particularism, demonstrating just how intertwined the two concepts were, just how
expansive, ambitious, and progressive the Zionist dream could be. “ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew) - the Land of Israel,
Palestine] was the birthplace of the Jewish people,” he began. “Here their spiritual, religious and political identity
was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and
gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.” Attempting to build a broad, appealing, ideological infrastructure based
on what experts now call “civic nationalism” on its admittedly “ethnic” base, Ben Gurion declared: “The State of Israel
will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country
for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of
Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion,
race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the
Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”

It would demean Israel, and Zionist liberalism, to use the oppressive examples of Israel’s self-righteous Arab neighbors
as any kind of a behavior standard. And Israelis will be the first to detail all the ways their State has failed to
fulfill its highest ideals. But it has been, overall, a gloriously successful experiment, carving out a little oasis of
liberal democracy in a harsh, forbidding totalitarian desert.

Critics should be ashamed for singling out Israel for acting in the ways typical of the modern nation-state. Critics
like Adam Shapiro, the so-called “peace” activist, are myopic, blind to Jewish suffering, silent in the face of
Palestinian violence, and only able to see Palestinian suffering and Israeli “aggression.” Even many Israelis,
especially far too many Israeli academics at home and abroad, lambaste Israeli “oppression” in a vacuum, ignoring
Israel’s risks for peace during the Oslo years, forgetting Ehud Barak’s unilateral Camp David concessions, not
mentioning Yasir Arafat’s rejectionism and the Palestinian’s strategic decision to reject negotiations and rely on
terror.

These days, many critics also violate reasonable norms by indicting Israel for the “pre-crime” of transfer and expulsion
– simply because there are some voices in Israel calling for this immoral plan or because some outside analysts have
decided that this is Ariel Sharon’s only option or true intent. Such premature indictments may pass muster in the
Hollywood of the Tom Cruise-Steven Spielberg collaboration “Minority Report,” they are not acceptable in the real world,
and should be especially rejected in academia. Similarly, it is fashionable to damn Israel as a mini-Bosnia or Serbia
wallowing in its “ethno-religious criteria” when the rest of the democratic world has gone multiethnic and
multicultural. In fact, the United States and Canada stand out as states based on an all-inclusive civic nationalism;
most of Europe remains rooted in ethno-religious forms of nationalism.

It is suspicious that liberal critics spend much time demonizing the Jewish state but fail to mention the restrictions
in most European countries for non-Europeans. In deeming Israel an “anachronism” in the New York Review of Books, NYU’s
Tony Judt claimed that the Western world had turned “pluralist … multiethnic and multicultural,” making Israel
“distinctive among democratic states in its resort to ethnoreligious criteria with which to denominate and rank its
citizens. It is an oddity among modern nations … because it is a Jewish state in which one community—Jews —is set above
others, in an age when that sort of state has no place.” Here, as usual, hope triumphs over facts, selective perception
distorts the truth. Noble liberty-, equality, and fraternity-minded France has closed more than 50 professions to non-EU
citizens, according to the International Herald Tribune of December 25, 2002, with the list including “pharmacists,
midwives, architects, airline pilots, funeral home directors and anyone who wants to obtain a license to sell tobacco or
alcohol.” Other European countries have imposed similar restrictions, especially regarding working in government jobs.
"People don't really like foreigners here," one immigrant student reported in Germany. "The neighbors are terrible to
us.” According to the Tribune, “multiculturalism, a word that has positive connotations in immigration societies such as
the United States, has negative connotations in Germany. Only 21 percent of Europeans polled in 2000 were considered
‘actively tolerant’ of immigrants.” Given such restrictions and prejudices, Israel can proudly compare its record of
openness to immigrants, and openness to its Arab minority, despite difficult, and often war-like conditions. And that is
comparing Israel to Europe – let alone to its Arab neighbors.

Israel, then, is typical of modern nation-states neither “anachronistic” nor uniquely oppressive as the Chomsky-Shapiro
relativists masquerading as moralists claim. Progressives can and should continue to delight in Israel, in the vigor of
its press, the vitality of its democracy, the power of its courts, the creativity of its universities, the dynamism of
its population, the latitude of its many internal dissidents, the rights afforded its minorities, the sophistication of
its economy, the ease, freedom, and equality of so many of its citizens. Of course, Israel faces serious challenges and
is far from perfect, like every nation-state, like all human creations. Shame on so many liberals, and so many
academics, for jumping on the intifadist bandwagon, highlighting every Israeli imperfection – and doing it to
delegitimize the Jewish state -- while overlooking so many other countries’ failures to fulfill many basic liberal
ideals. Liberals who are Zionists can and should proudly celebrate Israel’s many accomplishments, while prodding it
persistently but constructively to do even better.

Note - Commentary does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Zionism on the Web

External Zionism Links

This site provides resources about Zionism and Israeli history, including links to
source documents. We are not responsible for the information content of these sites. These links are NOT intended to be
an exhaustive reference about Zionism, but the list will keep growing...

Please tell us about your favorite links and we will review them for inclusion.